


orbiting the sun

by julysixth



Series: oh, the places you’ll go [1]
Category: Day6, GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lots of it, Non-Graphic Violence, Science Fiction, War, and this is their downfall, gotday, in a war torn future gotday plus chan are a squadron formed by the martial government, militaristic future, space travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julysixth/pseuds/julysixth
Summary: One night thirteen little boys were torn from their beds and given the weight of the world to carry around the sun.





	1. first rotation, yugyeom

Brian was the first to leave. His departure left behind a void of silence within them and endless questions. When he defected, he left with a guitar strapped to his back and “I’ll write to you” written on his face. He smiled and it didn’t look any different from the many other times he’d head out the door of their base with a smile and a wave.

 

 _Of course_ , Yugyeom thought. Brian’s smile would never betray him. He downed 72 enemy planes with the same smiles accompanied by free-spirited laughs, like it was all a game. And that nothing was real. Yugyeom always thought to himself that he wanted to play it the way that he played it. Brian was confident, he had his weaknesses in other places but the skies were his.

 

They had nicknamed him their _Rock’n’roll Kamikaze Playboy._ It wasn’t a title borne from affection but Brian took it that way anyways. It started off as the team making fun of his music taste _(rock’n’roll)_ and then the character he’d get so into whenever they’d go out into the City at night. Bar after bar, club after club, always knowing what to say to girls _(playboy)_. At some point, Sungjin added _kamikaze_ because he would risk _everything_ on an aerial mission, including his life, and that scared all of them.

 

“I’m not dead yet because I’m just that good,” He joked. Yugyeom was the only one who laughed.

 

Brian got into an argument with Jaebum one night when the team returned to base and Yugyeom was holding onto a fractured forearm. A failed mission. And a rough landing.

 

 _“Careless,”_ Jaebum bit out.

 

It was the word that described Yugyeom best that day but he directed it at Brian. 

 

Brian wanted him out of his head. But Brian was never good at shutting any of them out. _Especially not Jaebum._ Brian would never admit it, he would always play it so cool. They stared each other down for seconds so slow on a clock that Yugyeom felt like he’d wait for Brian’s response with breathless anticipation until the steel walls around them rusted. Instead, Brian turned away and looked at Yugyeom.

 

“ _I was proud of you today no matter what._ ”

 

Defeat darkened Jaebum’s eyes as fast as guilt clouded Yugyeom’s.  

 

Yugyeom is the youngest, but never the least smart. He’s always the first to know. But at that time, he didn’t think it’d be Brian.

 

\---

 

When their sector generals brought the team together, they let them into each other’s heads, establishing what would be an unspeakable form of intimate communication. Unspeakable because they hated it all the same. It was excruciating. One of the sector scientists has a nose that hasn’t looked quite the same since that day-- the day Jackson’s fist met it with so much force that scientist saw stars for weeks. It took six men in white lab coats to hold Jackson down.  

 

Yugyeom did not want to know about things that were not his to know. Traumatic childhoods, pathetic ex-lovers, and agonizing insecurities. None of them did. But they took it all in and discovered, involuntarily, what it truly meant to be vulnerable. The connection was supposed to make them the perfect unit. But Yugyeom concluded that who ever slaved to research and implement this technology knew nothing about the nature of human beings.

 

The space in which they communicated telepathically was called the Arcade. They called it that themselves, why? It looked like one, it sounded like one, and it felt like one. Colorful lights and noises overwhelmed them. Like an arcade where gaming machines emitted different music and sound effects, each of them being connected to the space produced something unique.

 

Chan and Bambam’s shared obsession with Japanese cartoons from ages ago brought in upbeat sugary theme songs and a blur of bright neon signs like a night on Tokyo streets.  

 

Brian had an affinity for cheesy A.D. '80s rock bands that he could never be bothered to explain. So every now and then, songs like Def Leppard’s _Pour Some Sugar On Me_ would pervade their collective thoughts. If it came through from his subconscious, it sounded muffled like they were listening through a wall. Sometimes it came through deliberately (if he really felt like annoying them) and it would be as loud as if Def Leppard themselves were playing a farewell concert in their heads.

 

Flying out to AC/DC’s _Thunderstruck_ for a mission gave them a thrill that they wouldn’t openly admit. But Brian knew it and was proud to be the administrator of such rituals. With the opening guitar riff playing in the background, Yugyeom  can still see him smirk from his cockpit and wink at either Jaebum or Jinyoung who flanked him in their usual formation before pulling down his helmet snuggly over his head. Jaebum would roll his eyes and put on his own helmet.

 

 _Can you focus?_ Jaebum’s voice says in the Arcade. He’s sitting next to Brian at the race car simulator.  

 

_I should be telling you that, babe._

 

Yugyeom can see Jinyoung scoffing and shaking his head. But he smirks as well in amusement and it can’t be missed.

 

They all learned how to keep certain things from drifting into the Arcade but it wasn’t easy and it was a burdening challenge for some of them.

 

Every now and then Yugyeom would let a yellow butterfly into the Arcade and if that happened, the others knew there was something wrong on his end. It happened when he fractured his arm. It happened when he got caught in quicksand on Mars. His yellow butterfly was just one example of the distress signs that manifested in the Arcade whenever someone’s trigger had been set off.

 

To disconnect from their intertwined thoughts and telepathic pathways, there were only 3 options. Yugyeom had thought about them a lot.

 

  1. A cerebral procedure that could possibly erase one’s memories, authorized and executed only by the sector commanders.
  2. You die.
  3. You betray your squadron. Or... just one member. That’s all it takes.  



 

Knowing this, for Brian there was really only one option. And Jaebum never saw it coming.


	2. second rotation, jaebum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The solar system has 13 planets.

_Our friendship was like that. Never happening all at once._

 

It was strange. No one was the glue. If Jaebum looked at any group of friends he could always pinpoint the glue, the person who kept everyone together. Why didn’t they have one? Maybe they were so absorbed in their own agendas and motives. He was always so scared that one day they’d realize that and fall apart. They were put together for a reason, he didn’t think he believed in fate but there are some times he looked into the past and wondered if all of it had been foretold at some point.

 

2551 was the last year of _anno Domini._ This was the year humans perfected the technology required to travel faster than the speed of light, revolutionizing space travel and settlement. Thereafter, the _Space Date_ or _S.D._ became the notation for the year count.

 

When the first extraterrestrial attack took place in the year 14 S.D., Earth was already at war with itself. Nations put aside their differences to combat the threat and operated under a single martial government. National lines were redrawn and the Earth was divided into sectors led by diverse teams of generals of all nationalities.

 

In the year 37 S.D., an alliance of planets agreed to peaceful terms and formed the Pangalactic Federation but not all races were friendly towards this alliance. 5 years later, the Pangalactic Federation approved of Earth’s request to impose a blood tax.

 

They were children of the blood tax. Each year the militia coercively recruited boys and girls ages 5-18 with the primary objective of selecting and training the ablest children and teenagers for the military or civil service of the Earth.

 

There’s a story Jaebum’s grandmother told him many times when he was young to quell his fears of being taken away by the soldiers.

 

_One night, eons ago, on the oldest planet in the universe, thirteen little boys were torn from their beds by the stars. The stars told them this, “You will become great warriors one day and you will protect the god of the sun.”_

 

_So the boys grew up on the battlefield, becoming knights of the sun, the most powerful warriors the universe had ever seen._

 

_The sun god had a daughter, a red dwarf star who fell in love with one of the knights. He was strong and handsome, with firelight in his hair. She watched him from afar and was captivated by his beauty and his skill, but most of all, his compassion for his comrades._

 

_The thirteen knights fought together and won many battles. But the sun god had enemies that had grown too strong by succumbing to a god of darkness. And the knights were not perfect, they were human after all. With every battle, they grew overconfident and reckless, jealous and prideful, jaded and disillusioned. They were worn by the wars within themselves— unreachable desires for love, for family, for home._

 

_One by one, the knights fell to the sun god’s enemies. When only the knight with firelight in his hair remained, he cursed the stars. So heavy-hearted was he for his fallen comrades that he decided to take his own life. As he lay dying on a battlefield of cosmic dust he cried out to the stars, “Why have you abandoned us?”_

 

_The red dwarf star took pity on him and without her father’s permission, she gave up her life to turn the fallen knights into thirteen planets. For as long as the sun burns, the thirteen planets revolve around it, and they continue to fulfill the destiny that had been granted onto them._

 

_The other stars were moved by the dwarf star’s selflessness, they spread her stardust over the planet of her favorite knight, so that she could be with the one she loved forever. And so her life became the ocean, it became the trees, it became the birds, and it became us. This is the story of Earth and our solar system._

 

Jaebum does not remember why this story gave him any sort of comfort as a child. These days when he thinks about it, he thinks about the thirteen of them taken by the militia, stripped of their childhoods, families, and homes. They weren’t torn out of their beds on the same night. They were taken in different years at different ages. But if he were to write their lives into some bedtime story, he’d still start it like this—

 

One night, thirteen little boys were torn from their beds and given the weight of the world to carry around the sun.

 

-

 

Jaebum visited Yugyeom’s grave the other day. It hasn’t gotten easier.

 

He felt the engines of fighter planes rumble and roar across the sky. And he remembered the time he visited the younger boy at the Academy. Yugyeom had gone back to train for an elite air force project unit that was being assembled for the highest level of special aerial operations.

 

When he made that team Jaebum wished he was strong enough to say he was proud of him. But he only smiled when Yugyeom broke the news. _I was scared and I’m sorry. I wanted so badly to be brave_.

 

The day Yugyeom died Jaebum saw his yellow butterfly in the Arcade and he thought whatever Yugyeom was going through he’d get through it like he always did. Yugyeom was tougher than he appeared on the exterior. It fluttered in front of Jaebum and rested on his finger. He waited for it to vanish like it always did. But instead its wings grew dry and crumpled and Jaebum knew something was terribly wrong.

 

They met before the team was put together. Yugyeom was recruited through the blood tax later than the rest of them, had a shorter training time but he was a natural and was able to keep up with the best of the Academy. One time, the section had a break after a round of capture the flag and the two of them sat by an unnamed river to eat the meals provided for them. It was sunset, the sky was on fire and the wind wrapped and held their bodies tight.

 

Yugyeom told Jaebum that the river reminded him of home. He was from a small mountainside town. He had a mother and father who loved him very much. And he had a little sister. Every Sunday afternoon, he would go to the foothills of the mountain with her where the two of them would chase butterflies by a riverbank until dusk. War was an abstract idea to him. For his humble town, hidden away, it was nothing more than a show on TV. As a child, he only saw it as something that happened in some far away land. All of this he told Jaebum with a smile on his face. His smile always radiated a brightness that never seemed to fade.

 

But his story turned, as all stories do.

 

One Sunday, Yugyeom couldn’t accompany his sister to the river. He had to bike to the neighboring town to find the medicinal herbs his mother desperately needed for his father. So his sister went off to chase butterflies alone. It took him an hour and a half to get to the other town. After he found the herbs, he headed home hoping to make it back before dusk.

 

He biked and biked underneath an unchanging sky. Then he heard it. It sounded like distant rolling thunder. In the blue above him, contrails drew dizzying circles around in a crazy waltz. A battle in the beautiful skies far away. He could not tear his gaze from them.

 

Then the skies shattered. The deafening roar of aircrafts felt cataclysmic to him. Sharp silhouettes appeared as if to graze the hills and they streaked past him. The fighters played the cat or the mouse in turn as they climbed swiftly into the sky. One fleeing plane fell out of the skies, spiraling and spewing orange flames to crash into the foothills. The same foothills where he and his sister chased butterflies.

 

Then he saw it, the aircraft he’d never forget. It circled around to confirm the kill, a black fighter plane with a large number “13” on its body emblazoned in yellow.

 

That day, half his town went up in flames. And his sister never returned from the river.

 

-

 

Jaebum asked Yugyeom why he decided to specialize in aerial combat. Yugyeom said he didn’t know and that he was also confused over why he wanted so badly to become the very thing he had hated.

 

Jaebum never knew if he was more scared or more selfish. He doesn’t know why but the first time he heard him laugh he wanted to protect him. But he did it all wrong. And though it was hard to admit and he’d never admit it out loud, he was glad Jackson and Brian were always there to get it right. If he listened, in the stillness, he can still hear Yugyeom calling out spiritedly, _“Hyung!”_

 

Many eyes would turn to him. But Jaebum would never be the one he was looking for. It was alright, because he could still watch over him from afar. He’d still say that he shined brighter than anyone does.

 

Everytime Jaebum looks at his grave, he thinks about how he doesn’t belong there. He belongs by the river. _God, you loved that river, I bet your Heaven looks just like it_.

 

Yugyeom would always ask Jaebum to come there with him. And Jaebum would say something thoughtless and dense like,

 

_Must we go there? Please, not this time._

 

But now he wishes he could say,

 

_Yes, we can sit at the banks and we can talk about butterflies._


	3. third rotation, bambam

Sometimes the team dreamed the same dreams. Bambam has this nightmare. In a subway station, he still sees Sungjin, in furious tears, beating his fists bloody against the concrete wall. On the street above that subway station, he still sees Youngjae and Jinyoung dropping their weapons and kneeling before enemy soldiers.

 

He still sees Jaebum holding Ayeon’s lifeless body. And the same words come flooding back to him in ringing echoes.

 

_“That’s just like you, Jaebum. Thinking you can save everyone. Don’t be ridiculous, do you really care?”_

 

That was the last time any of them heard Brian’s voice in the Arcade.

 

The dream ends with a voice from an automated system that fades out as he awakens.

 

 _Squadron A761 - HELIOS, Mission ID: Kremlin Dusk, Failed_  
_Squadron A761 - HELIOS, Mission ID: Kremlin Dusk, Failed_  
_Squadron A761 - HELIOS, Mission ID: Kremlin Dusk, Failed_  
_Squadron A761 - HELIOS, Mission ID: Kremlin Dusk, Failed  
_ _Squadron A761 - HELIOS, Mission--_

 

With Brian gone, the Arcade felt undeniably empty. His lights had gone out and they never heard _Pour Some Sugar On Me_ again.

 

Bambam couldn’t say he knew Brian’s heart well, but he could only blame himself for his betrayal and departure. The older members of the team fought all the time because of him and all the stupid shit he would get himself into. He figured getting into stupid shit was what he knew how to do best.

 

 _Do you really care?_ There’s just something about those words that would keep Bambam up at night.

 

“Do you even care about anything?!” Jinyoung had asked him, Chan, and Yugyeom when he was lecturing them after a mission on Nix, a snow planet colonized by humans. In their all-white battledress, Jinyoung, more than anyone, looked like an ice prince, regal but cold. The only thing colder than his words were his eyes and the air in the spaceship, autopiloted and en route back to Earth.     

 

“Hey. You’re pushing it, don’t you think?” Jackson intervened, Bambam was embarrassed that he had to. Again.  

 

Although there was an underlying jab at the reprimand, Jaebum took Jinyoung’s side that day, “He’s not pushing it enough.”  

 

“Lay off, the mission was a success,” Brian said nonchalantly, sitting down at one of the control stations to study the flight path on the screen before him.

 

“So we’re just going to call that shitshow a success? We followed nothing in Plan A. Or B. Or C. Dowoon is going to be in Recovery for weeks--”

 

Jackson didn’t let Jinyoung finish, “The Arcade exists for a reason, you--” 

 

“Give me a break, you’re an Arcade apologist now?”

 

“No. I’m not. I’m saying communication was the actual issue because _you_ , you’re so _scared_ to be in there for some fucking reason!”

 

“Enough! Don’t forget who still has authority here.” Sungjin’s voice thunderously filled the spaceship’s command center. Jinyoung squinted and his lips quivered and Bambam knew Jackson had struck a nerve.

 

“You acted childishly today!” Sungjin shouted at the younger boys before turning to the older members, waving his finger vigorously to point at all of them, “And you’re all acting childish right now!”

 

Bambam remembered being surprised at how Sungjin had singled Jackson out, “I expected more from you. You showed no responsibility out there. Dowoon almost...”

 

“He _didn’t_ die because of _us_ ,” Brian’s eyes didn’t leave the control station screen but he spoke as if they all needed reminding. _Us,_ meant him and Jackson and to be expected, Jaebum had something to say about that.

 

He sighed like Brian’s ego was the usual perpetrator, “There you go again, you two always have to be the best.”

 

Brian’s hand came down heavy on the control panel as he shut the flight path map down, it was like the buttons would break. He spun around in his seat. “Right, this is about _me_ now? That is fucking rich coming from you.”

 

“You all didn’t die today because Jae and Mark are some good shots!” Sungjin stated. It was the fact of the matter. Bambam stole a quick glance towards Jae and Mark— their sniper unit who saved their asses that day and on more than one occasion. Their sniper unit who had refused to say a word this whole time. They always stayed quiet when the squad fought like this. Bambam knew they were boiling on the inside.      

 

“Fine, I accept my mistakes,” Jackson said throwing his hands up, in quick surrender. “But you,” He pointed at Jaebum, then Jinyoung, “And you. Are on a power trip.” Before they could respond, he grabbed the helmet that he had set down on the strategy table earlier, turned to Sungjin and bowed sarcastically, “I’ll try to meet your expectations next time, _sir_.” Then he left through the sliding doors of the command center with a hand through his hair and a peace sign even more ironic than his words of deference.  

 

 _I care about too many things!_ Bambam wanted to shout out loud. Maybe if he shouted into the Arcade’s void it would have had a more dramatic effect. But he bit his tongue and stared at the floor like he always did because he could never look at anyone in the eye when he knew he fucked up.

 

\--

 

Before ending up in Damyang Boys’ Home, an orphanage in a safe woodland, Bambam wandered city streets and spent some time at a pub shining shoes to collect spare coins from militia soldiers who’d pass through night after night.

 

Because of his young age, the barkeeper allowed him to stay with him and his daughter. He took in a small, malnourished black cat that he named Narda. The barkeeper was kind enough to let her stay with Bambam because he knew the boy had no other friends. She stayed inside the pub most of time because she was so scared to be outdoors for some reason.

 

One night Bambam was walking towards the pub and noticed ashes floating slowly down. Then people started rushing past him. Due to his curiosity, he could not follow in their direction. So he lengthened his stride and covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve and reached the corner of the street where the pub was located. It was on fire along with the businesses on both sides of it.

 

More and more people ran past him. The barkeeper’s daughter saw him and grabbed onto his arm, “We have to get out of here.”

 

He remembered shouting for Narda repeatedly despite his confusion over what was going on.

 

“Leave her!”

 

He started crying but she urged him to run. He wasn’t a good runner, he stumbled many times. When they reached a place where she figured they were safe (from Bambam had no idea what) and his breathing leveled, he asked her why they had to leave Narda behind.

 

She tightened her grip around his arm. She looked down at him. “Bambam, I’m going to tell you a secret. You should carry this throughout life,” she said, “The more people and things you care about, the weaker you are...”

 

He did not even question what happened to her in her lifetime that made her look at life in that way. He later learned that the pub was set on fire by their soldiers because the barkeeper was suspected of affiliating with enemy soldiers. He never found out what happened to the barkeeper but his daughter’s words would stay with him forever.

 

\--

 

There is a humble memorial on top of the mountain Seoraksan which was erected 3 years ago. It was built for the 47 fallen Cerberus commandos of the Seoraksan Operation. The Cerberus Brigade was a special operations force that specialized in counter-terrorism. This special forces unit had existed for 2 centuries before defuncting 5 years ago after the Seoraksan Operation. Its sigil was the hound of Hades itself, a black, three-headed dog on a red background.  

 

The brigade was so-named because they used a triangular offense tactic, always lead by _three_ officers handpicked by the Pangalactic Federation military chair. Bambam had seen many pictures of these trios in history books and they all looked so powerful.

 

_“Do you know how much ONE of those lives are worth? On the battlefield, the skillset of a Cerberus commando is equal to that of 10 infantry regiment soldiers.”_

 

It may have been an exaggeration but they did feel invincible like that. And that’s why Bambam never expected three boys from his orphanage in the woodlands to become the last Cerberus heads. There’s a statue of the three of them standing side by side at the Seoraksan memorial shrine. Their stone eyes hold vigil and their names are engraved on marble.

 

 _Son Hyunwoo_  
_Lee Hwitaek  
_ _Park Sungjun_

 

Bambam visited the memorial often. When the team was still complete, Jinyoung would accompany him sometimes. Then after Yugyeom’s passing and Chan’s extraction, he always found a way to come with. They would fly their aircrafts to the top of the mountain. There were visits when neither of them would say a word to each other but they each knew what the other was feeling. On a spring morning, Bambam passed Jinyoung some memories through the Arcade.

 

It started with the barkeeper and his daughter and then the image of an old, rickety, wooden sign on a large gate. The Damyang Boys’ Home was the only home and family Bambam knew.

 

Mark was recruited before all of them. That year, he was the only boy from the orphanage to be taken by the militia. The next year, they took Hyunwoo, Sungjun, and Hwitaek. Bambam and Chan looked out from the window of their room on the third floor of the orphanage and watched as soldiers hurried them into a military bus. No other boys were allowed to go outside until the soldiers were gone but Bambam and Chan, always so stubborn, snuck out the way they always snuck out of the home.

 

They ran out around the back of the home, past some metasequoia trees whose leaves and branches filtered the sun into tiny flecks of light, and through a gap in the fencing that only the smaller kids could fit through. And they ran up the hills, towards the road. They figured if they ran fast enough, they could get to the bottom of the hill right where the road forked before the military bus did.

 

Chan got there before Bambam. He was always the faster runner. So he stood there in waiting. And as Bambam finally reached his side, the bus sped by the two small boys. They waved goodbye with hands dirty from playing outside and cheeks stained with tears. They waved even though they did not know if their friends ever saw them.

 

All of them were reunited years later, however, at an Academy combat evaluation. Bambam and Chan were junior cadets and they dreaded the day as it approached. For that evaluation day, each junior cadet was to be randomly matched to a senior for a one-on-one fight in a simulator. They had completed their lower division classes and training but they had not yet interacted with any of the seniors in the sector who studied and trained in other facilities.

 

When the day arrived, they avoided the gazes of the Academy seniors, not because they were so focused on preparing for their individual matches but because they were scared out of their minds.

 

Bambam’s opponent laid him flat his my back during their match in just over a minute. It was a hard fall that took the wind out of him. If he knew he’d be taken down that quickly he wouldn’t have spent so much time training for the evaluation.

 

“Thought you were gonna go easy on him, Hyunwoo,” said a voice that I’d later find out belonged to Sungjin.

 

“I did. He doesn’t even recognize me,” the boy in the armor said. When the simulation ended and our armor powered down, Bambam finally recognized my opponent. Chan was already running towards him. He crashed into Hyunwoo with a huge smile on his face. Bambam watched them embrace and laugh as he caught his breath and clutched his chest. One of the Academy seniors, a boy with bleached blonde hair, offered his hand to him.

 

“Nice try, _Bammie_ ,” he bellowed in laughter.

 

Bambam covered his face with embarrassment.

 

“You’re _blonde_ ,” Was the only thing he could manage to say and he said it half groaning.

 

“You’re _blue!”_ He exclaimed, ruffling Bambam’s dyed hair.

 

Once Sungjun helped him to his feet he enveloped him with strong arms in a bear hug so tight Bambam felt like his bones were going to break. He’d come to know that all of Sungjun’s hugs were like that, no matter who you were to him and no matter what the occasion.

 

“Hey, what happened to the kid who would threaten to beat me up whenever I’d steal from his lunch years ago?” Hyunwoo asked, walking up to them with Chan trailing behind him.  

 

“Must’ve been left behind at the orphanage,” Bambam replied absent-mindedly, studying the rest of the seniors on the sidelines. His face was still warm from being showed up in less than 2 minutes.

 

In the corner of the arena, two seniors sat on a large metal crate. One of the seniors was Hwitaek who applauded ironically once Bambam made eye contact with him, he was laughing too. The boy next to him was Wonpil and Bambam didn’t know him at the time but he remembered the gentleness in his handsome face and smile. He remembered thinking it was almost like he didn’t belong among them.

 

When he looked from Hwitaek to Sungjun and Hyunwoo and then to Chan’s face full of excitement and happiness, Bambam felt overwhelmed by an unexplainable and unfamiliar feeling. Now he knows the feeling well. He felt complete but uncomfortable.

 

Complete because he had everyone he ever cared about around him.

 

Uncomfortable because there was a voice inside of him warning him. _The more things and people you care about, the weaker you are._

 

\--

 

When Hyunwoo, Sungjun, and Hwitaek assumed their positions as Cerberus heads, their demise was never even an outcome that existed to Bambam. But they took on a suicide mission to take down an interplanetary terrorist leader. The mission was successful but not without huge sacrifice. 44 commandos and their three leaders died that day in a 12-hour firefight. The sector generals and the Pangalactic Federation never formally apologized for their gross underestimation of the threat. Bambam resented them for that.

 

When news broke, the Arcade spiraled into chaos. Bambam did not know what the three of them had meant to the team until that moment. Every single one of their distress signs materialized in the Arcade space.

 

Except for Mark’s. 

 

Bambam and Mark had shared a room in the team base. One evening, while laying in bed, ready to fall asleep, Bambam asked him why they didn’t see his distress sign that day. Bambam and the rest of the team had only seen Mark’s distress sign, a pack of wolves, a couple of times in the Arcade. The team had probably seen Bambam’s falling ashes a good 10 times more than they’d seen Mark’s wolves. It was not really that Bambam questioned how important their three fallen friends had meant to Mark but that he genuinely found it strange and it seemed like no one else did or that they were all just ignoring it. 

 

The room was quiet for some time. For reasons unspecified, there were no doors to any of the rooms on the base, so the dimmed lights that lined the hallway illuminated their faces. It was in that moment of silence that Bambam realized how difficult Mark must have had it when he was recruited alone and so young. Until then, he never wondered why it happened that way, why Mark was taken alone when there were so many boys in the orphanage. At the same time, Mark had never talked about what that period of loneliness was like or what he had been through.

 

When Mark finally broke the silence he spoke quietly and cautiously and Bambam felt immediately that what he was about to say was something he had not entrusted anyone with yet.    

 

“Bammie, I think there’s something weird with me,” He whispered, voice wavering like a candle in the wind.  

 

It was not the response Bambam expected but at the same time he knew not what to expect. “What do you mean?”

 

“Inside of me.” The words left his lips like pulling teeth. He was pushing Bambam deeper into confusion.

 

“What the hell?” 

 

“In my head... it’s different, it’s…”

 

Another period of silence lapsed as Mark struggled to choose his words.

 

“Like there’s someone--” Mark himself stopped abruptly as Jackson walked past the room, heading to his own down the hall. Bambam thought he might have glimpsed a fleeting moment of fear in Mark’s eyes. “Sorry. Nevermind…”

 

Mark would get that way when Jackson was around. Not always, but enough for Bambam to notice. He never really thought too much about it but the torment in Mark’s voice was heavy on his heart.  

 

The hallway lights dimmed to their lowest setting, darkening the room. Mark changed the topic like Bambam expected him to.

 

“You know Sungjin and Jinyoung and even Jaebum are the way that they are because they _care a lot_.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

How could he, Chan, and Yugyeom not know that? It made sense to Bambam now why the younger team members vied for Brian and Jackson’s favor and affection. Because they were the closest to Hyunwoo, Sungjun, and Hwitaek they would ever get again. But he didn’t want the other members to think their efforts to guide them were unappreciated and going unnoticed.

 

“Hyung,” Bambam said, “Thank you.” 

 

“For what?”

 

“For always having my back even when you’re not on my side. And even when you’re not on anyone’s side.”

 

Bambam didn’t know what Mark was going through or if his words were something the older boy needed to hear at that time but the small smile, guarded well (but not enough) by the darkness, was the most genuine display of happiness Bambam had seen from him in a while.


End file.
